I fired it up tonight. I'm a decent way into rank 2 story missions now and the battles are just about starting to get interesting.
It's a decent leap on from GE2 imo but it's still a (imo) lovable scrappy B tier game. That's no bad thing either because I really really like it. I like a good B tier game.
The arena environments are a bit disappointing so far, but I think the aragami look great. If its anything like the previous one they'll get more interesting to fight too.
In some ways it reminds me of Freedom Wars on the vita which I still think is awesome.
As for anime. Wow, Hilda is very much an anime... uh... trope.